Dang!
@Frogman taught me something new! I didn't know HK was the copy. By the way,
@AirOpsMgr , you do get one of these I got a mag I'll send you. It's been in the GAW section for forever. Lol
If I recall:
It was designed by German engineers at the end of the war / start of the Cold War. Since their country / factory didn't exist, they moved the design to Spain(CETMe) for production. Once West Germany was back up and running again, the design was brought back and produced by the brand new H&K company that was reborn out of the ashes of the Mauser company.
This is all from memory, so some of the details may be wrong. But I think this is the gist of the story.
So it's a Germany copy of a Spanish design based on German blueprints.